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“I would be open to such a 'MyLabSpace' but am doubtful it would gain wide acceptance. Although I welcome open access to papers, I think posting lab notebooks and draft manuscripts online could lead to undue competition and intellectual property issues. A 'MyLabSpace' could make for occasional interesting reading (expletives, self-psychoanalysis), however its major value would be access to data that are never going to see the light of day in peer-reviewed papers. Perhaps this could be accomplished more efficiently by wider use of journals with lower subjective hurdles for publication.”

“There is no doubt that the World Wide Web has had a tremendous impact on our daily lives. Some of these impacts have been beneficial and some perhaps not. This impact includes new networking capabilities such as MySpace and Facebook (used religiously by my students!). As a new Web-based network for the communication and discussion of science, the obvious advantages to Science 2.0 would be quick access to information, quick feedback, and worldwide collaboration. At a time when fewer scientists seem to be presenting unpublished data at conferences, however, I wonder whether Science 2.0 would catch on. It may take some time.”

“It's an intriguing idea—feedback and critical comments on your work could greatly influence the direction of your project. Sharing your work at meetings is almost always a good thing, so why not extend that to the Web? There may be a lot of scientists out there happy to share helpful advice or start collaborating, especially if they do similar work. The people most apt to browse through your notebooks or drafts, however, may be your closest competitors, so there is some risk involved. I'm sure many scientists would be too worried to post their notebooks or drafts on the Web.”

“I would have skepticism as to the benefit of this effort except as a teaching exercise. As Aldous Huxley put it, 'Life is short and information endless, no one has time for everything.' Experiments usually need to be repeated, discussed, and repeated many times before they lead to a robust finding that is likely to be of value to the wider community. I'm not advocating it, but I could more clearly see merit in the reverse scenario—requiring that all the 'raw' data on which a submitted study is based being made open-access after publication.”